Gendou Ikari gazed at the screen from his station at NERV headquarters.
There were no problems tracking the movements of the newest Angel, and
there were no doubts about it. It was the real thing. The timing could
not have been worse, not with everything falling apart as it had in the
last few months.

“Do you think we should send them out now?”

Slowly Gendou swiveled his neck so that he could gaze at the sleepy-eyed
man standing next to him. His new second-in-command never gave the slightest
hint that he was uneasy around Gendou, no matter how hard he tried to
put the newcomer on edge. Gendou certainly did not trust the man that
SEELE had forced upon him. Still, someone had to replace the missing Fuyutsuki.
Even Gendou Ikari could not operate NERV alone.

Gendou never allowed anyone to know the total shock he had felt when
his longtime companion, and the only person that he remotely came close
to trusting, ran off with Maya Ibuki. The only thing he had left behind
was a note saying that Gendou was ‘a real piece of shit’ and that he was
sorry he had ever become involved with NERV.

And Gendou could have sworn Maya was a lesbian, too. Most unusual, indeed.

“What should we do, sir?”

That had come from Misato. Gendou looked down at the lower level where
everyone was staring at him expectantly. Ritsuko and Misato were still
there, as were Aoba and Hyuuga, but the new Japanese-American woman and
young Japanese man next to her, both with matching headsets on, were new.
It had been part of the deal that those two would serve as ‘forwards’
for the two new pilots that SEELE had ordered Gendo to take on. The council
had been insistent on it, and refusing the newcomers had not been worth
a showdown with his ‘masters.’ So Gendou Ikari had accepted them with
a false smile while making plans to deal with the new problems. He had
originally never intended to allow units five and six to ever see combat,
but fate had worked against him from the beginning.

“Can the third child pilot unit one yet?” Gendou asked.

“No, sir,” Ritsuko answered. “Shinji’s still in a coma from the food
poisoning. They think he’ll be conscious in a few days.”

Gendou gave an inward sigh. At least they had removed the C-Ko girl,
the one that had poisoned Shinji with her lunch, from his class and were
currently in the process of interrogating her. The procedure had not gone
well. The girl’s wailing drove even the most hardened interrogators out
of the room in less than ten minutes. Even muzzling her did not work;
she could whine right through it. All that served to do was convince Gendou
that she was some sort of saboteur sent by Keele to see what they could
do to upset his plans.

There was another choice. “What about the second child?”

“SIR!!!” Misato protested. “She’s over eight months pregnant! She can’t
possibly pilot an Eva! She could have that child at any time!”

Of course Gendou had known, but he was looking for any other options.
It appeared allowing Shinji and Asuka to cohabitate under what was jokingly
referred to as Misato’s ‘supervision’ had been a mistake. What was it
Asuka had said after discovering she was pregnant? Something like, “That’s
the last time I try screwing to kill time!” Now, with unbelievably violent
mood swings affecting her, she would frequently blame Shinji for her condition
and strike him with the nearest object capable of inflicting blunt trauma.
Then, seconds afterward, she would begin crying and apologize, telling
Shinji she loved him and would never hurt the father of her child again.

Now Gendou was about to become a grandfather, and worse, Shinji was apparently
going to take responsibility for the child, (assuming Asuka didn’t kill
him first), which meant that she was going to be Gendou’s…

A shudder shook through him as he contemplated having Asuka Langley-Soryuu
as his daughter-in-law. Maybe allowing the Angels to destroy humanity
wasn’t such a bad idea.

One last chance. “How’s Rei?”

“Her condition is still the same, sir.” Ritsuko informed him.

There had been nothing but problems coming from the Rei clones ever since
the unfortunate death of Rei II at the hands of the fifth Angel. Each
one they had awakened since had some kind of detrimental flaw.

Rei III was the first to demonstrate a problem. As soon as she started
speaking, Gendou knew something was wrong. Her first words were, “Rei
is a robot. But if Rei makes thirty thousand friends, Rei will become
a real girl.” Outside of that she seemed perfectly fine and functioned
even better with her Eva than her predecessor. That was until she decided
that the best way to make thirty thousand friends was to become in idol
singer.

While in her Eva.

While in the middle of a fight with an Angel.

It was as the first singing noises came forth that Gendou decided all
of the Eva’s would be stripped of their auditory capabilities. Man was
not meant to hear the musical tune ‘This is My Time to be a Star’ sung
by an Eva. On the plus side, within three seconds of hearing the singing,
the Angel committed a rather spectacular suicide by self-destruction.
On the down side, everyone that had heard the song had to be given immediate
psychiatric treatment. Needless to say, Rei III was ‘sanitized,’ quite
happily by Gendou himself, at the first available opportunity.

Rei IV started out well enough, even better than Rei III. But after a
month, she let her hair grow out, tied it back into two ponytails, and
started claiming there were “too many idiots,” and refused to pilot anymore.
Currently she was being held in a deep sub-level of NERV, just in case
they had absolutely no choice but to try and use her.

Rei V was the most unstable of the lot. Upon emerging from the nutrient
bath, she gave Gendou a big smile and said, “Hi there! My name’s Rei Ayanami!
Hey, you’re pretty cute for a middle-aged guy!”

Aside from having a personality, she seemed all right. But upon learning
Asuka was already in her third month of pregnancy, and learning that it
was with Shinji that she had been doing the “horizontal mambo” as Rei
V so delicately put it, she went crazy and attacked Asuka. Rei V was ‘sanitized’
as well. Since then they had abandoned utilizing any more Reis until they
could figure out what was going wrong with them.

“Sir?” the second-in-command spoke once again. “We need to do something.”

Allow the pilots to go out or let the Angel destroy the city? Not much
of a difference really. “Release units five and six. And try to keep them
destroying more than half the city this time.”

Toji and Kensuke heard the approach of the Evas from the hillside they
were on. At any moment the giant machines would come into view. Once again
Kensuke had insisted that they risk their lives to get a close look at
an Eva in action, and like a fool, Toji had gone along with it.

“I thought Shinji was still in a coma,” Toji mentioned.

“Yeah,” Kensuke agreed. “Maybe Rei’s calmed down now.”

It was at that moment the two Evas crested the hill and came into view.
Both of the boys’ jaws dropped low enough to hit the ground.

“I… it can’t be!” Toji managed to get out.

“It is!” Kensuke cried out in disbelief.

Both boys grabbed on to one another and began to cry about how doomed
they were.

“I want the positron rifle!” Isao Ohta shouted in near madness.

“No, Ohta! You’ll cause more damage than if we let the Angel run amok!”
Kanuka Clancy shouted into her headset from her position as forward for
the gun-nut that piloted Eva five.

“I don’t want Alphonse to get hurt!” Noa Izumi whined from Eva six as
she saw the Angel approaching. “You remember what happened last time.
That bastard ripped off one of poor Alphonse’s arms.”

“Just focus, Noa! You can take him out quickly!” Asuma Shinohara assured
her from his position in the command chamber.

Kiichi ‘Razor’ Goto, second-in-command of NERV, lit a cigarette as units
five and six engaged the Angel in battle. “I’m sure it will go better
this time,” he assured Gendo. “I heard MAGI give the odds of them destroying
as much of the city and the Geofront as they did last time at just below
fifty percent.”

Gendou Ikari went from steepling his fingers in front of his face to
burying his head in his hands. How could he have agreed to allow the newly
reformed SVD Section 2, originally of the Patlabor division of the Tokyo-2
police, to join NERV? No matter the outcome of the fight, everyone was
doomed.